Improving Patients’ Lives Through Epilepsy Care & Research Accurate diagnoses are vital for patients to receive the best possible care. At the RUSH Epilepsy Center, donor support has empowered our specialists to get diagnosis and care down to a science to help patients experience their best quality of life. RUSH’s epilepsy specialists compassionately diagnose and treat all cases — from the most routine to the most complex. With help from our robust community of supporters, our team leads the field in applying leading-edge research to patient care — a process known as bench-to-bedside or translational research. Imaging capabilities at the RUSH Multimodal Neuroimaging Laboratory are essential to helping our experts make exact diagnoses and pinpoint, precisely, where seizures originate in the brain. Philanthropy has dramatically advanced RUSH’s neuroimaging and research capabilities by helping physicians and scientists collect, analyze and accurately assess more images to advance care and generate new knowledge of epilepsy for the entire field. With donor support, RUSH leads the way in advancing neuroimaging for epilepsy through radiomics research, providing services that are unavailable elsewhere and making treatmentadvancing discoveries that improve people’s lives. Radiomics is a rapidly growing area of medical science that uses mathematical algorithms to analyze data available from high-powered patient images and enhance clinical decision-making. In 2023, RUSH acquired a 3T MRI scanner — the health system’s most advanced — which has the strongest magnet field strength for greater accuracy in imaging. The RUSH Epilepsy Center uses this scanner for all outpatient clinical screening. Donor support helps RUSH epilepsy experts collect neuroimaging data for promising research that advances efforts to identify biomarkers for specific types of epilepsy and specific demographics. With patient consent, the lab uses a robust repository of patient imaging, specimens and data to assist with research and advance patient care. The RUSH Epilepsy Center’s dedicated team, directed by Michael C. Smith, MD, professor and division chief of the Section of Epilepsy and Clinical Neurophysiology, is devoted to helping each patient receive the care that works best for them and their individual circumstances. With your help, the team investigates promising hypotheses that translate into new and better care approaches. On the following pages, we are proud to highlight the exciting progress made by our talented team of epilepsy physicians and researchers whose efforts are propelled by donor support.
In the words of Dr. Smith, “Donors fuel progress in academic medicine.” Thank you for making these advancements possible. You are making a difference in the lives of our patients and people with epilepsy far beyond RUSH.